Blogging My Life

  The balcony in my apartment where I live in Indianapolis offers a decent-ish view of the Fourth-of-July fireworks display the city puts on every year. I can usually see two-thirds of the show, the medium bursts and high bursts; the one-third that I cannot see, the low burst, is blocked by a building between me and where the fireworks are launched from. But that's okay. Its usually a pretty good show. I stand on my balcony and drink a beer and watch as Indianapolis celebrates our country's continued experiment in representative government.  The fireworks we watch today are inspired by the bombardment of Fort McHenry that began on September 13th, 1814 (be honest now, how many of you thought this was a revolutionary war event?). This is, of course, the event witnessed by Francis Scott Key and memorialized in a poem he wrote the next day upon waking to see the American flag still flying above the fort the morning of September 14th. That poem was later set to music and became our

  The Supreme Court has just ruled that a President of the United States cannot be punished for "official acts." That being the case, President Biden should do the following: 1) Suspend all further elections, at least for the office of President, and declare himself to be "President-for-Life".  2) Proclaim that a successor of his choosing will be named President upon his death. 3) Disband the Supreme Court and replace it with Justices entirely of his own choosing. 4) Declare the Republican party to be an illegal entity. (Fun Fact, the U.S. Constitution nowhere dictates the existence of political parties. It allows for them but doesn't say they must exist.) 5) Arrest Donald Trump for the charge of Treason. 6) Declare that the right to interpret the Constitution of the United States is his alone.  7) Proclaim all these to be "official acts". There will be a lot of protest and rioting in the streets as a result of these official acts, so President Biden s

 Consider the difference between the two phrases: "Let's eat, Grandma." and, "Let's eat Grandma!"

 I hate it here. Indianapolis sucks ass. If you've been paying attention, I moved back to the "city" of my birth, a place I couldn't wait to leave, in order to spend time with my parents before they die. That's the only reason I'm here, there's no love for Indianapolis. I left a vibrant port city, Seattle, a real city, a city of the world with a thriving cultural scene and restaurants of all flavors that are open past 3:00PM, for a provincial shit-town. I don't know which of my parents it will be that dies second, my mom or my dad, but ten minutes after that funeral, I'm planning my move back home to Seattle.

  So, I just finished reading Anne Applebaum's excellent piece  The War Won't End Until Putin Loses  in  " The Atlantic," and I couldn't agree more. Continuing to offer Putin some sort of "off-ramp" should not be the goal because, a) Putin doesn't  want  an off-ramp, and, b) the type of appeasement that such a strategy represents would only serve to encourage Putin to try again at a later date when his army would have had the time to regroup and rearm.  Applebaum makes clear that, contrary to French President Emmanuel Macron's misguided urging, Putin  should  be,  must  be, humiliated. It continues to baffle me how Macron, someone whose country knows firsthand what happens when dictators are appeased, can continue to try to help Putin "save face." Again, something Putin isn't looking for in the first place. Perhaps Macron needs remedial training in his country's twentieth century history.  Applebaum makes reference to comments m

 As anyone reading this knows by now, I moved back to Indiana to spend time with my parents. My mother and father are both still alive but in their seventies and eighties and, so, not going to be around forever. As I was making the decision to move here I thought most about it being nice to be with family, but I didn't give much consideration to the fact that I had absolutely no friends here. All the friends I had growing up here are dead.  Its not like I had more friends than I knew what to do with in Seattle because I didn't. I'm not that kind of person. I don't have lots of friends. If anything I have many acquaintances and a (very) few good friends. I don't call someone "friend" lightly, like many people do, the majority of the people I spent time with were acquaintances. Acquaintances, to me, are the people you know from work, or the club you're a member of. You might spend eight hours a day or more working with them, getting to know a bit about t